Poverexic in NYC

AMERICA FUCK YEAH!  Coming again to save the mother fucking day yeah!!!

I love holidays because free food is 100% guaranteed, and I especially love July 4th because there are endless bbq’s.  I was in DC for the weekend, mainly because the 4th in the City sucks and I figured this would be a good opp to visit DC since the only other time I visited it was when I toured Georgetown in high school with my parents and had my Asian mother yelling in my ear the entire time that the only school worth going to was Harvard and I was wasting my time with all these other no-name schools.  <<shakes head>> Asians.

SS and I started out the weekend well by meeting up with N and D at some park whose name I don’t know where they had endless pitchers of sangria and salsa dancing.  We were excited about the former, not so much about the latter — we thought we had finally escaped salsa dancing when we left Latin America a few weeks ago.  Anyway, apparently this is the huge hangout place in DC and people get really friendly and have picnics and, most importantly, share food in the spirit of generosity and friendship.  N, D, SS and I were having our nice pitchers of sangria when these two girls came over in an apparent attempt to pick up N and D — they clearly didn’t care about SS and me but we cared about them because it seemed they had a nice little picnic of food under their arms.  We gave them a huge smile and enthusiastically welcomed them to our circle (”please! come join us, come come!”) and ate their cheese and bread and fresh veggies and drank our own sangria.

This picnic was followed by dinner at Rosa Mexicana followed by aimless walking up and down the streets of Chinatown and then agreeing to meet up with JO whom I hadn’t seen since he visited NYC several months back and I saw him for 2 seconds on Delancey Street, which we couldn’t find him on for hours because he kept telling us he was on “Valencia Street.”  Anyway, since I hadn’t seen JO in months, SS and I decided we would make the effort to go meet up with him wherever he was.  Apparently he was in the NE, the Brooklyn to NYC, the “danger zone” where no girl would dare travel, especially at night.  We got in a cab and as we were pulling up to this bar that JO was at, the cab driver counts our cash, turns around and yells “This is all I get?!?!?  This is all I get for taking you to this dangerous neighborhood?!?!?!?”  SS and I looked at each other… “dangerous neighorhood”…. wonderful.  We threw him another $1 and walked upstairs to find JO having margaritas with his high school friends.  Though this was quite the trekk, it was good to see JO and most importantly, we had some really good margaritas from their pitcher, which I proceeded to throw up this morning.  I hate it when I waste drinks like that!!!!!!!!!!!!

LAST NIGHT WAS AMAZING.  Coworker K IMed me circa 4pm to ask what I was doing after work – I tried to come up with a quick excuse in case I was about to get roped into something I didn’t want to do but of course my terrible-at-lying self couldn’t lie and just said “nothing, why.”  BOY WAS I GLAD I MADE MYSELF AVAILABLE.  Apparently her roommate R had just gotten promoted and in his ecstacy was inviting random people to dinner, and by random I mean coworker K and her boyfriend, and their other roommate who ended up not being able to go and so K started asking other people if they could come instead.  Good thing the rest of our team wasn’t able to go since apparently I was like the last person she asked, but luckily my I-never-do-anything-fun-during-the-week self was fully available to attend this impromptu dinner on K’s happily promoted roommate R.

The dinner was at this super secret top secret place called Bohemian, one of those NYC super secret top secret places you have to have the number for to get a reservation but the number isn’t available anywhere unless you get it in person from someone who has personally been there.  Rather than explaining in words, let me just show you a few photos of just a few of the items we were served at this incredible Japanese super secret top secret restaurant Bohemian.

Sample Meat Platter

Miso Black Cod

Kobe Mini Burgers

I can’t even tell you how incredible the food was — other deliciousness we ordered included a plate of sashimi (SO FRESH), rice balls, steak (SO TENDER), cauliflower, risotto, potato wedges, and sake panna cotta (INCRED), accompanied by two bottles of wine and a bottle of bourbon.  It was quite incred.  Exceeded my expectations.  AND the restaurant had one of those really high tech toilets that they have all over Japan that has an automatic toilet seat heater and a cookie cleaner and a bunch of other neat gadgets.  AND I became bff with the chef because he was Japanese and so we communicated in our native tongue.  He called me a “Japanese beauty.”  And then I nervously laughed and stuffed my face with burger.  Whatever, now I have his business card and have the super secret number to the place.

Yesterday was a rancid fried rice experience.  Today was a good rice experience.  Last night E (who likes to be called “Mr. Girth”) was over at our apt hanging out with G and sketchily called me over being like “yo I have a present for you, it rhymes with stick.”  Great, I thought, what do you want.  I was half expecting him to pull out a used condom or something when what he actually pulled out was A TAKEOUT BOX OF DERICIOUS CHINESE FOOD!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! OMGOMOGMOGMOMG it was literally a only-half-eaten thing of general gao’s with white rice.

FOR ME!??!??!??!?!??!  I asked.  Yeah you can have it.  Mr. Girth was leaving for Vancouver in the morning and wasn’t going to be able to eat it for lunch the next day anyway, so he gave me all his leftovers.  I was so excited — this was my chance to symbolically redeem the rancid fried rice that had gone to waste the day before.  I decided to ask Mr. Girth for his advice and told him my rancid fried rice experience and asked him how I could remedy this situation moving forward.

He stared at me for a few minutes as if I was retarded and said, why don’t you just put it in the fridge tonight and write yourself a post-it note as a reminder to take it to work in the morning.  I stared at him back as if he was retarded and said, CLEARLY I don’t own any post-it notes, do I look like an office.  Why don’t you just write yourself a note on any piece of paper.  I don’t own any pieces of paper.  Why don’t you email yourself.  I don’t check my email in the morning.

After about 15 minutes of this I finally gave in and agreed to refridgerate the food overnight, email myself a reminder and check email in the morning so that Mr. Girth’s general gao’s with white rice would not go to waste.  Lo and behold, this morning I woke up, remembered to check email, saw note to self to take food from kitchen fridge to work, and had the dericious general gao’s with white rice for lunch today.  SUCCESS!

Well today was odd.

All morning today I was looking forward to dericious leftover beef fried rice that S gifted me last night while catching up on all my missed episodes of Weeds and True Blood (OHHHHHH SOOOKIEEEEEE).  I came home circa 11pm after watching 5 straight episodes with a huge box of fried rice and a huge smile on my face.  I left the fried rice in my room overnight because whenever I put stuff in the fridge I always forget to bring it to work the next morning, then I have to remind myself the next day to remember to bring my leftovers to work the next day, then the next day I forget to bring my leftovers to work again, and before I know it the food’s gone bad and I want to shoot myself in the foot.  So to prevent that, lately I’ve just been keeping leftovers in my purse overnight so there’s no chance of forgetting to bring it to work the next morning.

That’s what I did with the fried rice last night, and I immediately put it in my office fridge as soon as I got to work this morning at 8am.  (That’s really not that bad I don’t think — 9 hours sitting out in an air conditioned room.  In poor countries they don’t even own fridges and they’re all fine.)

So I fridged my food all morning, and at 2pm I was so excited to open my takeout box of dericious runch.  Except when I opened it, something was off.  The rice was REALLY sticky.  Like you know when you make rice krispie treats and you melt the butter and the marshmallows then you add in the rice krispies and you mix it all together and the melted marshmallows are all gooey and the rice becomes all gooey?  That’s what it looked and felt like when I ran my fork through the rice.

That’s strange, I thought.  But I just shrugged it off.  I decided that if I microwaved it on high for three minutes everything would be fine and any potential bacteria would get killed off.

But after I microwaved it, it was worse.  It was literally a plate of goo.  Hmmm, I thought.  and took a bite.  It tastes fine………….. kinda gooey.  But the beef tasted fine and so did everythinng else except for the rice.  But I started to get a little sketched out and started IMing all my coworkers to come take a look and provide an opinion.

Opinion was not so positive.  Coworker B threw up a little in her mouth, coworker K called me disgusting, coworker A told me I was going to get food poisoning, my SVP E told me I should have a post-it note on my forehead saying ‘ATE RANCID FRIED RICE’ in case I was found passed out somewhere in the hallway so the medics would know what to do, and coworker P came over to my desk, grabbed my plate, and threw the rice away in the kitchen trashcan as I desperately ran after her and screamed NNNNNNNNNNNNNNOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That was a sad moment.

Luckily, I still have another half a box of the leftover rice left in the office fridge for tomorrow.

TODAY WAS THE MOST INCRED FOOD DAY EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!  I am absolutely STUFFED!!!!!!!!!  Clients came to our office today so all day today was food after food after food.  For our breakfast meeting we had sausage and egg and ham and egg breakfast burritos, so I had 4 (2 of each).  Then I had 2 cups of yogurt with fruit and granola, 1 cornbread muffin and a cup of freshly squeezed orange juice.

Then for lunch I didn’t go to the meeting itself but I came back for the leftover food, which consisted of grilled veggies, mixed rice, baked ziti, salad, MOZZARELLA STUFFED CHICKEN, and cookies!!!!!!!

THEN!!!  Later in the afternoon we had an all staff meeting and had tri-colored tortilla chips with the best guac, mango salsa and pico de gallo ever PLUS cheese and crackers and fresh fruit!!!!!!!!!!!!

I probably won’t eat for the rest of the weekend.

On a related note, BACON LUBBBBEEEEEEEEEE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

http://gizmodo.com/photogallery/breakfastgadgets/1009060174

Bacon Lube

GASPGAPSGASPGPASGPASPGAPSGPASGPASGPASPGAPGPASGPAS

Yesterday was a great day to stay late at work, and a great day to have a cubicle right next to the CFO’s assistant.  At 5:15pm, I spotted a food tray packed full of dinner food, apparently for a dinner meeting, at the CFO’s assistant’s desk.  He immediately caught me staring and shook his finger at me, “Not for youuuuuuu!”

“WILL THERE BE LEFTOVERS?!?!??!???!”

“Only if you stay past 8pm…”

Easy enough!

So I had a delicious dinner of chicken with mushrooms, asparagus, potatoes, salad, pasta and black-and-white cookies, courtesy of the CFO.

I’M BACK BITCHES!!!  Best two weeks I’ve had in a while — just got back from Ecuador and Costa Rica with SS and B and had the most incredible food for very little moola.

Let me start with QUITO, ECUADOR —

Stayed with SS’s host fam where all food was free.  The greatest thing about Ecuador is that they put popcorn on everything — soup, ceviche, etc.  It’s really fun.  That’s probably also why they’re really fat given that the rest of their diet consists of aji – so I mean, it’s gotta be the popcorn.  To be perfectly honest, while I can’t complain about the lack of money I spent in Quito, the quality of food was not too superb except for their choclo, avocado and cheese dish, along with the world’s largest empanada that I had the pleasure of eating all by myself:

World's Largest Empanada

Another terrific dish was cuy, they are so cute:

Cuy

I am jk.  I don’t eat rodents.

Moving on to COSTA RICA —

Costa Rica was epic.  Beers are $2 and I ate steak literally every single day for ~$10.  Credomatic was having some 50% off promotions at Costa Rica’s most expensive restaurants, so B took SS and me to one every night (and by most expensive restaurants I mean <$20 steaks, which turn into <$10 steaks with the discount).  Let me walk you through my trip.

Day 1, San Jose – The day started out disastrous when migracion denied SS access into the country because she didn’t have her yellow fever immunization card with her, so they made her fly back to Quito, get her f-ing card, then come back the next day.  B and I were like, well fuck, so we went to Henry’s 2-for-1 happy hour at 5pm to drown ourselves in guaro, followed by La Cascada where we had baby beef steak with beans and maduros (plantains) with baked potato, accompanied by Bavaria beer, tortillas with chimichurri, tres leches dessert, all for $16:

La Cascada

Day 2, Monteverde – As soon as SS was actually let into the country, we were off to Monteverde in the B-mobile, where we ziplined and Tarzaned and then had steak with chimichurri with green rice and vegetables, accompanied by a bottle of wine and strawberry/papaya smoothie, all for $11:

Monteverde

Day 3, Tamarindo – Well, Tamarindo was quite the ugly beach compared to what I’m used to and I lost $20 in 10 minutes of blackjack, but the upside was that I got tan, saw a lot of legal hookers, and ate steak salad with potato chips, mangos, pineapples and corn on the cob, accompanied by two 2-for-1 strawberry caipirinhas and two 2-for-1 strawberry mojitos (best drinks I’ve had in a while), all for $13:

Steak Salad

Day 4, Liberia – Drove to J’s farm that is a huge sugar plane plantation, where there was nothing to do but drink copious amounts of wine, tell scary stories, and tan by the pool.  That night I ate sirloin steak with chimichurri, rice, beans and veggies, accompanied by chifrijo and a bottle of wine, all for $12.  Photo unavailable.  Lo siento.

Day 5, San Jose – Day 1 was so good that I had this exact same meal on Day 5 with the same group of people, but this time with more bottles of wine followed by a night at Cuartel, which I like to call a ‘mini Carnaval’:

La Cascada

Best two weeks I’ve had in a while.  In the words of B, Costa Rican food was all “very nice.”

LEAVING FOR ECUADOR IN 30 MINUTES!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I am really excited because I am flying TACA, possibly one of my fav airlines along with LAN.  I love how when you fly across South America, no matter how short the flight, they serve you a meal.  With a flight this long, they will definitely serve three meals, accompanied by a dulce de leche dessert and free flowing wine!  It’s a FEAST!!!  My only concern is that my flight is at 4:30am, so I got myself a Tasty King combination beef with broccoli with pork fried rice and shrimp egg roll to stock up in preparation for 9 hours of no eating.

Twitter founder Biz Stone came to twat with us today and discuss twitterbanging.  Very interesting discussion – I learned that the birds carrying whale image is from istockphoto, but most importantly, I scored a chicken sandwich, a corned beef sandwich, some salad, roasted veggies, Sun Chips and Baked Lays, along with blondie bars and brownies.

Speaking of brownies, brownie points to the first person who can say they’ve twitterbanged.

Brownie points also to people who come up with new questions for povertak: http://urtak.com/u/poverexia